Abstract
Privacy law in the United States has not kept pace with the realities of technological development, nor the growing reliance on the Internet of Things (IoT). As of now, the law has not adequately secured the “smart” home from intrusion by the state, and the Supreme Court further eroded digital privacy by conflating the common law concepts of trespass and exclusion in United States v. Jones. This article argues that the Court must correct this misstep by explicitly recognizing the method by which the Founding Fathers sought to “secure” houses and effects under the Fourth Amendment. Namely, the Court must reject its overly narrow trespass approach in lieu of the more appropriate right to exclude. This will better account for twenty-first century surveillance capabilities and properly constrain the state. Moreover, an exclusion framework will bolster the reasonable expectation of digital privacy by presuming an objective unreasonableness in any warrantless penetration by the state into the smart home.
Citation
Stefan Ducich, These Walls Can Talk! Securing Digital Privacy in the Smart Home Under the Fourth Amendment, 16 Duke Law & Technology Review 278-299 (2018)
Included in
Fourth Amendment Commons, Internet Law Commons, Privacy Law Commons, Science and Technology Law Commons
Available at: https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/dltr/vol16/iss1/8